With which sage reflection Ned turned his eyes away from the dark vista down which he had been gazing, and rolling round in his blankets forgot both the gloom and the gold.
For two or three hours the sleepers lay there undisturbed by the calls of the owls, or the stealthy tread of a passing bear, which chose the trail as affording the best road from point to point. At night, when there is no chance of running up against a man, no one appreciates a well-made road better than a bear. He will crash through the thickest brush if necessary, but if you leave him to choose, he will avoid rough and stony places as carefully as a Christian.
Towards midnight Cruickshank, who had been tossing restlessly in his blankets, sat up and crouched broodingly over the dying embers, unconscious that a pair of bright, beady eyes were watching him suspiciously all the time.
But Phon made no sign. He was only a bundle of blankets upon the ground, a thing of no account.
By and by, when Cruickshank had settled himself again to sleep, this bundle of blankets sat up and put fresh logs on the camp-fire. The warmth from them soothed the slumberers, and after a while even Cruickshank lay still. Phon watched him for some time, until convinced that his regular breathing was not feigned, but real slumber, and then he too crept away from the fire-side, not to his own place, but into the shadow where Roberts lay.
After a while an owl, which had been murdering squirrels in their sleep, came gliding on still wings, and lit without a sound on the limb of a tall pine near the camp. The light from the camp-fire dazzled its big red-brown eyes, but after a little time it could see that two of the strange bundles, which lay like mummies round the smouldering logs, were sitting up and talking together. But the owl could not catch what they said, except once, when it saw a bright, white gleam flash from the little bundle like moonlight showing through a storm-cloud, and then as the bigger bundle snatched the white thing away, the listening owl heard a voice say:
"No, my God, no! That may do very well for a Chinee; it won't do for a Britisher, Phon!"
And another voice answered angrily:
"Why not? You white men all fool. You savey what he did. S'pose you no kill him, by'm bye he—"
But the rest was lost to the owl, and a few minutes later, just as it raised its wings to go, it saw the smaller bundle wriggle across the ground again to its old place by the embers.